Fit Friday : The Beginning

The day before I had that baby, I weighed more than I had ever weighed before in my life. The day after I had that baby, I weighed about 25 pounds less than that. It was a good start, and my naive, overly-optimistic self assumed that I would continue on that downhill journey until I was at my pre-pregnancy weight…or even my wedding day weight.

But, did you know that having a newborn is tough? Did you know that life happens, and you might end up going back to work earlier than you expected, or your child might have to have surgery, or you might just be exhausted from trying to figure out your new life?

Shocking, right?

So here I am 369 days after giving birth not at my goal weight. I’m not even at that day after the birth weight since I’ve gained about half of that back. I want to beat myself up. I want to make excuses. I want to delete this entire post and not talk about weight or any of the feelings of discomfort and sadness that I have because of it.

But, I won’t do those things.

Instead, I’m going to be proactive. I’m going to start making healthier choices and share my weekly progress so I will be accountable to changing.

I know I’ve started and stopped about 900 blog series and challenges, including at least one devoted to losing weight. However, I have never felt like this before. I don’t like how I look or feel. I’m tired and sluggish. My skin looks terrible. I struggle with finding things to wear. I just feel frumpy and blah. Plus, I’ve never had to be on blood pressure medicine before. I’ve never been classified as morbidly obese before. I’ve never had to raise a daughter before, and I don’t want her to struggle with her weight. I want her to be strong and confident and healthy. I want me to be strong and confident and healthy also.

I also want to accomplish a goal and feel proud of myself. I have a lot of goals that I have halfheartedly attempted in the past, and I’m tired of quitting things. I want to succeed. Actually, I have to succeed. My life quite literally could depend on it.

So, here’s the deal – every Friday morning, I will weigh in (but I’m not going to share those numbers yet…there may come a time when I’m proud of the progress I’ve made, but for now, it’s embarrassing). Before Friday is over, I will update how my week went and set goals for the upcoming week. I want to also try sharing a recipe or resource that helped me over the week too, whether that’s a quote, a workout idea, or something else.

My new week will start on Saturdays. I’m doing that for a couple of reasons. First, my husband is off on Friday nights, so that will be our “free night.” Char sometimes stays with her grandparents on Friday nights also, so we enjoy a kid-free dinner on those nights! I also can order our groceries on Fridays, so I know that I have a whole stocked kitchen to work with for meal prepping over the weekend. Finally, I think there’s a little victory in getting to Monday (the typical “diet starts today” day) and knowing that I have been eating clean for a couple of days already. I don’t have to treat Monday like an atonement for a weekend of crappy eating.

Will I mess up? Undoubtedly. I’m human.

Will I beat myself up, quit, or go off the rails? No. That’s how I operated in the past, and I’m tired of being that person.

Alright, now that my super-long backstory is finished, let’s talk about this week’s goals. I’m going to keep them relatively simple since it’s my first week, and I have “all or nothing” tendencies.

Goal 1 : Drink half my body weight in water daily. I’ve been so bad about drinking water, and I can tell that it’s making me feel super thirsty and cotton-mouthed. I loaded a water reminder app on my phone to annoy remind me to drink enough daily.

Goal 2 : Prep lunches for the week. I want to get to the point where I meal prep breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks, but that will be way down the road. Lunches are a good place to start because I’m inclined to go grab fast food if I don’t have anything made for lunch.

Goal 3 : No restaurants or coffee shops – except for Friday night. I have gone to two coffee shops and five fast food restaurants this week. Wow. After typing something like that, I realize that I’ve nailed a huge cause of my problem with my weight and wallet! The bad part about coffee shops is that I usually have to get myself a little “treat” along with my expensive, over-sugared coffee. And, let’s not even talk about the five different fast food places, including one I ate from twice this week. Sheesh.

Who wants to join me on this journey? I am going to lose this weight by cleaning up the food I eat and exercising. That’s it. No supplements. No powders. No wraps. No anything that deviates beyond my regular grocery budget and spending. I want this to be sustainable and realistic, and I think this is going to be my best method. If you want to join me, leave me a comment here or on my Facebook page.

See you next Friday!

(Just kidding. I’ll be posting Charlotte’s ONE YEAR update on Tuesday and a Guys Behind the Blog linkup on Thursday. Busy week on the ol’ blog!)